In its long and storied history, Naval Station Great Lakes has had various missions. From training the nation’s sailors, to treating some 11,000 Vietnam War wounded, to hosting the first freed prisoners from the war, the base has served the nation well.

It is being asked, again, to embrace a new objective: Support immigration operations of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement and deportations. With the Army’s Sheridan Reserve Center a few miles south, it is an oddball request to use the Navy base to house Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and, possibly, National Guard troops for duty in Chicago.

This, after all, is a military facility where buildings were used as makeshift morgues in August of 1965 following the crash of a Boeing 727.

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